Apparently, every corner of Britain trembles with fear and loathing of our beige-dark citizens - at least according to a new report by the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia. What is most interesting about this story is that it appears to reflect an insititutionalisation of common prejudice:

More than 35,000 Muslims were stopped and searched last year, with fewer than 50 charged. Three years ago only around 2,000 Muslims were stopped and searched.

Asian peer Lord Ahmed, a leading critic of Muslim extremism, told The Observer he had twice been stopped and searched in recent months at Heathrow airport.'

Statistics also show a sharp rise in the number of Muslims jailed. In 2001 there were 6,095 in UK prisons compared with 731 in 1991. Muslims comprise 9 per cent of the prison population but only 3 per cent of the population as whole.

'Islamophobia in Britain has become institutionalised. If we don't take positive action to embrace the young Muslim men in this country, we are going to have an urgent problem,' Stone said. 'We're going to have real anger and riots with young Muslims pitched against the police.'

Of the factors considered responsible for the rise in Islamophobia, the Terrorism Act 2000 and the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 are raised in the report. The report also criticises "the media's treatment of Islam, especially its coverage of Abu Hamza". Indeed, the media treatment of this rather lonely and demented sad-sack has been hyperbolic, to say the least (oh sure, he has about twenty hooded kids clustered around him on a road one morning, and that means he has a following). Unsurprisingly, psyclops leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, made ample use of such media imagery and footage in his election broadcast this Friday. Pictures of Hamza were cunningly spliced with shots of a street filled with brown faces milling around (some real geniuses in that outfit, no question). Griffin has also promised, in the past, to make ample use of the Home Secretary's vicious blundering on race . Blunkett, who is to race relations what Jim Davidson is to comedy, had suggested that it was time for Muslims to start "feeling British". Griffin has made similar capital out of government kow-towing to the right on race before:

"The asylum seeker issue has been great for us. We have had phenomenal growth in membership. It has been quite fun to watch government ministers and the Tories play the race card in far cruder terms than we would ever use, but pretend not to. This issue legitimises us."

In fact, when interviewed by the World At One shortly after Blunkett's "Britishness test" comments, Griffin accused Blunkett of "jumping on the BNP's bandwagon". So, I'd like to thank the government for making Britain a less pleasant place to live in. I'd like to thank them for handing propaganda gift-wrapped on a silver dish to the far right. I'd like to thank them for making a mockery of their promises to tackle Islamophobia by introducing laws that have enabled its institutionalisation. In short, for every black-eye or glassed jaw sustained by a Muslim in this country at the hands of racists, I'd like to thank David Blunkett. May his "hard-man" bluster accompany him to hell.